Post-Game Thoughts: Oregon State Football

Cal loses a game but maybe finds a folk hero?

Photo credit: Rob Hwang

I could easily go negative here. Cal lost a game decisively because their head coach with a decade of high level defensive coordinator experience, watched his defense allow 52 points in 10 possessions.

But I’ve already made my thoughts clear before, and the reality of the situation is clear for all to see. So instead, I’m going to focus on something fun.

Fernando Mendoza was a high 2 star/low 3 star quarterback recruit out of Miami with exactly two FBS offers, and Cal managed to flip him after he committed to Yale. By some scout rankings he was Cal’s lowest rated recruit for the class of 2022, and was widely viewed as QB room depth behind QB-of-the-present transfer Jack Plummer, and QB-of-the-future Kai Milner. When all of Cal’s QBs OTHER than Mendoza transferred during the last off-season, Cal recruited two QBs over him.

In short, the odds of Fernando EVER getting non-garbage time snaps for Cal were never high. The odds of him getting a start less so, the odds of him getting a start in just his second year in the program slimmer still.

And in his first meaningful playing time, he takes on a top 20 team and puts up a 21 for 32, 207 yard passing line to go along with 4 runs for 41 yards in a 40 point offensive performance. Those 40 points represent the 5th most points scored by Cal under Justin Wilcox against Pac-12 competition.

I’ll talk more about Fernando Mendoza’s actual on the field play below, but for now I just want to focus on the vibes. In a weird way, this was the most fun I’ve had in Memorial Stadium this year, even though Cal trailed nearly the whole game and never had the ball in the 2nd half with a chance to take the lead. That’s because a 3rd string redshirt freshman QB made the game fun, made the game exciting.

Does it help that his name inspires multiple silly memes? Absolutely!

Though I never thought that we could lose
There's no regret
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando

Offense

Efficiency Report

11 drives: 5 touchdowns, 1 FGA (1-1) , 2 punts, 3 turnovers (1 interception, 1 fumble, 1 downs), 3.6 points/drive

Fernandomania

The stats themselves are far from eye popping. 6.5 yards/attempt is a well below average number. As much as I hate to say it, the enthusiasm Cal fans had over this performance might say more about the standard of QB play Cal has received during much of the Wilcox era than it does about Mendoza.

But the context matters a great deal here. That context includes:

1. A 2nd year player in his first live action, against a top 25 team.

2. What I saw with the eye test was a quarterback who knew how to run his offensive system, and who was largely making the right reads.

3. Those reads included 4 QB keepers that were wildly effective, as part of a team-wide strong running game performance.

4. A pocket awareness that saw him avoid pressure, buy time, and step up when appropriate.

There are certainly concerns. Accuracy was inconsistent, and we didn’t get much of a sample on his downfield passing skills.

But for one game Cal had a competent game manager to build on Cal’s surprisingly strong run game, and he’s young enough that you can hope for developmental progress this year and in future years.

That’s reason enough to get excited. If he plays well in Salt Lake City, you have my permission to start dreaming.

Sending good thoughts to Sioape Vatikani

Cal’s guard went down late with a leg injury that looked bad. I think Cal can weather his injury on the field, as Matthew Wykoff and Bastian Swinney were splitting playing time at the other guard spot and now both will likely play full time. But it does rob Cal of depth, and perhaps more importantly it will rob Vatikani of more development via playing time, to say nothing about the potential developmental costs of injury rehab.

Defense

Efficiency Report

10 drives: 7 touchdowns, 1 FGA (1-1) , 1 punt, 1 turnover (1 fumble), 5.2 points/drive

By sheer points/drive, this was the worst defensive performance of the Justin Wilcox era. You can maybe have a debate about exactly how bad this was relative to the talent on the other side facing Cal, but if you were insane enough to want to debate worst defensive performances during the Wilcox era, this game would have to make the list.

It’s worth noting that Cal got two stops - one of them was aided by an OSU false start and the other had crossed mid-field before an OSU player fumbled. Kudos to Jackson Sirmon for forcing that fumble, but we saw almost no evidence that Cal could stop OSU without good fortune.

What happened?!?

There are so many ways that a defense can collapse. Maybe you get dominated in the trenches. Maybe you can’t tackle. Maybe your opponents have athletes that you just can’t cover.

None of those things were true against OSU. The Beavers were OK running the ball, but not dominant. 4.7 yards/run is OK but the 2nd worst rushing game so far this season for the Beavers, and certainly below their season average.

The Beavers did not force Cal to miss a bunch of tackles - just 6 on the game in 72 snaps per PFF. The Beavers have good players, but not dudes with such overwhelming talent that Cal couldn’t keep up in terms of speed or physicality.

No, it was basically three things that worked in concert:

1. Some combination of the best coached/play-called offensive game I have seen and/or the worst prepared defensive game plan I have ever seen. Oregon State had Cal chasing ghosts all game long, losing players on misdirection plays, getting caught up on play-action, getting out of position on screens and reverses, and generally being in the wrong place at the wrong time for 72 maddening plays.

2. Maybe the worst coverage game of the Wilcox era (which is hard to separate out from item #1)

3. And, on the rare plays where Cal got OSU into 3rd and long, D.J. Uiagalelei dropping in an NFL level throw to extend drives.

When you’re talking about a 5+ points/drive performance, it takes a confluence of great play on one side and bad play on the other side, and so I want to be sure to credit OSU’s coaching staff and the execution of their players as much as Cal’s deficiencies. I knew that OSU had all kinds of motion and frippery to confuse defenses, and their staff painted a masterpiece. I didn’t think that Uiagalelei had those kinds of throws in his arm, but he played maybe the best game of his career and made Cal pay.

Where’s the depth?

It’s interesting to note that as Cal got interestingly torched in the secondary, the coaches didn’t try to make any personnel changes. Cal played three members of their secondary for every snap, and rotated three guys in and out at the other two slots in the 5 man rotation.

Special Teams

Sigh

I don’t know how much of a difference it would have made with OSU picking their way down the field at will, but allowing OSU to return kicks to the OSU 40, the 50, and the Cal 41 (plus 15 yards on the penalty) damn well didn’t help.

Here’s an interesting stat! Opponent kickoff returns attempted:

Wazzu: 4
Arizona: 5
Stanford: 5
Oregon: 6
ASU: 8
UCLA: 8
OSU: 12
Utah: 12
Washington: 13
USC: 14
Colorado: 14
Cal: TWENTY FIVE!

Keep in mind, USC, Oregon, OSU, and UW all kick the ball off more often than Cal because they score so frequently. Cal has had opponents attempt returns on 25 out of 37 kickoffs!

Cal somehow has a problem that has largely been solved in modern college football. Nobody returns kicks any more! Alas, Cal is 126th in the nation touchback%, and 132nd in the nation in kickoffs attempted against. Prior to Oregon State, Cal hadn’t allowed many returns of consequence, but clearly opponents had seen weaknesses on tape that led them to tell their return men to challenge Cal, and it came home to roost against the Beavers.

Coaching & Errata

Man, OSU really pulled out all the stops . . .

A (pretty dumb) fake onside kick, a double pass flea flicker, multiple reverses . . . kinda feels like OSU came into this game oddly nervous about the possibility of a Cal upset. Which, in retrospect, Cal did put up 40 points so maybe post-loss-to-Wazzu Jonathan Smith has realized that his defense isn’t as good as last year and he’s got to throw out everything on offense to win games.

. . . which made me reflect on how infrequently Cal uses trick plays under Wilcox

Remember when Cal pulled four trick plays out of the bag to beat Stanford two years ago, and we were all like “man, that was awesome, but why didn’t you ever do that before?!”

This may have been the game to do something unexpected. When you’re kicking a field goal from the 3, maybe run a fake? When it’s 4th and 8 and you’re punting from the OSU 38, maybe run a fake rather than gain 29 yards of field position? When your defense is getting boat raced, maybe a surprise onside kick to steal a possession? If you have a QB who’s a former receiver, maybe run a fake WR screen that has a passing option? I dunno man, I know which coaching staff seemed like they put the most into this game.

Big Picture

Next week’s game against Utah is going to be extremely difficult to project due to the massive impact of injuries. If Cal somehow gets Ott and Sirmon and Vatikani back and Utah is just as beat up as they were against OSU, Cal might stand a pretty excellent chance. If Utah used their bye week to get a bunch of dudes back and Cal is without their best RB and ILB, next week could get really ugly.

And thanks to this loss, next week’s game is pretty much the last stand for any incredibly slim bowl hopes - if Cal can’t pull of an upset over either OSU at home or a batter Utah, it’s hard to imagine that they could possibly beat two of Wazzu, USC, Oregon and UCLA, in addition to Stanford.

I will be spending this week trying to think about how fun it was to watch Fernando and the Cal offense for one week, and to NOT think about how the Cal defense, one I hoped might push to be one of the best in the conference, has been absolutely shredded twice in three weeks.